Even coaches need their mirrors

From heart to brain, and back again: Insights from my own coaching journey

This week, something cracked open during my own coaching session. There I was, the coach being coached, when the universe decided to serve me a delicious slice of cosmic irony. I was receiving the very questions I usually ask others about joy, freedom, and play. Rumi called it the mirror of the heart, but I call it getting wonderfully caught in your own medicine. And wouldn't you know it? That mirror showed me exactly what I needed to see.

What it revealed went far deeper than simple reflection. It showed me why joy isn't just a nice-to-have bonus in our lives – it's a gateway to something far BIGGER. The ancient ones knew this. They had different words for different kinds of happiness, but what they really understood was that JOY is a technology for TRANSFORMATION.

Alicia in foolish action with a sage audience

Think about it: your brain literally shrinks when caught in negative patterns. But in joy? It expands, creating new possibilities. It's like your consciousness does a happy dance. And this isn't just poetic metaphor, this is how we're wired for evolution.

Speaking of evolution, have you ever noticed how your heart seems to know things before your mind figures them out? There's a reason for that. The heart has its own kind of intelligence, something the mystics knew and scientists are now confirming. When we journey from brain (hello, overthinking!) to heart (ah, there's the wisdom) and back to brain (but now with understanding), we're following an ancient map to our own transformation.

This map, though, often leads us straight into the territory of the fool. Let’s get a little honest here, we all get caught in patterns, like wearing an invisible suit of "shoulds" and "must-dos." The fool in every tradition knew something about this: sometimes you have to break the pattern to see it wasn't real in the first place. Kinda like attempting to get out of the Matrix.. but less scarier. It really is all BS!

And here's where it gets really interesting. That pineal gland the ancients called the third eye? Turns out it loves to do a little salsa dance. Every time we choose play over constraint, wonder over certainty, we're lighting up this inner vision centre. It's not just mystical talk, it's about accessing different kinds of knowing. Sometimes the deepest wisdom comes wrapped in laughter, and the most profound insights arrive through play.
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This matters more than we might think. When we contain our joy, we're not just suppressing an emotion, we're refusing an invitation to EVOLUTION. The price of staying small isn't just personal; it ripples out into everything we do. Every time we choose constraint over expression, we're not just dimming our own light, we're declining an invitation to grow.

Alicia as the Fool

What I'm discovering on this path is that freedom lives in the space between structure and spontaneity. The heart's wisdom often comes disguised as play, and sometimes the most profound truth wears a crooked smile. What looks like foolishness might be the highest wisdom. The fool and the sage are the same person, just catching different light.

Actually, during our last Clown Camp, we found ourselves deep in conversation about the dance between the fool and the sage. The sage sits atop the mountain, dispensing wisdom with grace. The fool tumbles up that same mountain, tripping over truths and accidentally discovering enlightenment in the process. Same mountain, same truths, wildly different approaches. Yet somehow, they both get there. Someone brought up the Zen masters, who would often act as holy fools to shake their students awake. Another mentioned the court jesters, the only ones allowed to tell kings the truth. These weren't just entertainers, they were wisdom workers in disguise, using laughter to bypass the ego's defenses and plant seeds of truth.

This journey from heart to brain and back again isn't just personal development, it's part of a larger dance of THE FOOL. It's about finding the courage to play at the edges of our comfort zone, to let wisdom and wonder mingle freely. It's about trusting that the path to growth might look more like a skip than a march.

And maybe that's exactly as it should be. After all, as Roald Dahl reminded us, "Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." So what do you say? Ready to play at the edges of wisdom and wonder? I'm in! 

P.S. Writing this was a challenge, I’m trying to pack so much depth into a few words. If you’re up for a deep, philosophical chat and want to dive into these ideas together, reach out! I’d love to explore and wrestle with these insights with you.

#heartwisdom #joyfulfool #wisdominplay